Monthly Archives: January 2017

RAVENCLAW: “I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.” –Brené Brown

HUFFLEPUFF: “I’m with you. But I have to say that although I understand the farmers’ suffering and understand why you would take up their cause, it’s your character that I find most compelling. In life one finds friends in the strangest places.” –Akira Kurosawa + Shinobu Hashimoto + Hideo Oguni (Gorobei Katayama: Seven Samurai)

“STEERPIKE: How’s the pain?FUCHSIA: I’m all right.STEERPIKE: Don’t be heroic. We’re not playing a game. I want to know exactly how much you’re in pain – not whether you are brave or not. I know that already.”

SLYTHERIN: “In the Garden of Eden, Eve showed more courage than Adam…when the serpent offered the forbidden fruit, she knew that there was something better than paradise.” -Tom Fontana (Cesare Borgia: Borgia: The Serpent Rises)

RAVENCLAW: “I don’t see myself as a hero because what I’m doing is self-interested: I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.” –Edward Snowden

RAVENCLAW: “The law doesn’t protect people. People protect the law. People have always detested evil and sought out a righteous way of living. Their feelings – the accumulation of those people’s feelings – are the law.” –Gen Urobuchi (Akane Tsunemori :Psycho-Pass: Perfect World)

GRYFFINDOR: “Even wounded you are still here. And the ones who hurt you should be very afraid. There are few things more dangerous than a wild thing that was broken and damaged and wounded but still stands strong and tall.” -Nikita Gill

GRYFFINDOR: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” -King James Bible (Ephesians 6:12)

RAVENCLAW: “Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” –Francis Bacon (Apothegms)

“SCARECROW: Can’t you give me brains? OZ: You don’t need them. You are learning something every day. A baby has brains, but it doesn’t know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.”

HUFFLEPUFF: “Purity has nothing to do with your sexuality, who you sleep with, how many people you sleep with or how often you sleep with them. Purity is simply a heart that cannot bear to see suffering, a skin that still bruises and has not hardened to the world and its cruelty, and a soul that is much kinder to others than is necessary.” –Nikita Gill

SLYTHERIN: “Never be sorry for who you are. Your personality should never be shrouded in what society expects of you. Be shamelessly, unapologetically you. You will find the world rallies behind those who carve roads of their own.” -Beau Taplin (The Road)

HUFFLEPUFF: “She drinks liquid gold from the sun to sing in a golden voice to the moon, girls like her will always spill light from their lips even when surrounded by utter darkness and gloom.” –Nikita Gill

RAVENCLAW: “For this once, I will come. But in the future you will have to go by yourself. Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.” –T.H. White (Merlyn: The Sword in the Stone)

GRYFFINDOR: “I wanted to give up the idea I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone.” -Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

SLYTHERIN: “We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.” -TS Eliot (The Cocktail Party)

RAVENCLAW: “Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.” –William Pollard

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”

SLYTHERIN: “So sharpen your fangs and wear your toughest skin. Shake the skepticism and condescension of others and have confidence in your ability to forge your own way. Be wild and tireless in all of your pursuits. And prepare yourself for the possibility that you might not always get what you think you want, but so long as you never give in, eventually you’ll get what you need.” -Beau Taplin

RAVENCLAW: “There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age.” –Sophia Loren

HUFFLEPUFF: “Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave – and it is often hard to be brave – be kind.” –Sarah Kendzior

“Your courage will still be shown in the little ways,each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,those you love will live in a fever of love,and you’ll bargain with the calendarand at the last momentwhen death opens the back dooryou’ll put on your carpet slippersand stride out.”

RAVENCLAW: “One could say, in fact, that no story really has a beginning, and that no story really has an end, as all of the world’s stories are as jumbled as the items in the arboretum, with their details and secrets all heaped together so that the whole story, from beginning to end, depends on how you look at it.” –Lemony Snicket (The End)

HUFFLEPUFF: “I don’t know who came here before me, who conditioned you to think you had to apologize or feel obtuse. But not here. Dream so big it’s silly. Laugh so hard it’s obnoxious. Love so much it’s impossible. […] Grow. It’s a big world. There’s room. You fit. I promise.” –Owen Lindley

“Sister tapped my brains, said, pssh, you’ll get ‘em right backOversensitive, defenseless, I made sense of it, I pencil inThe lengths to which I’d go to learn my strengths and knock 'em senselessThese sentences are endless, so what if they leave me friendless?Damn, you got no chill, fuckin’ right I’m relentless”

GRYFFINDOR: “We hurt, we fear, we may even regret that we did not do more. But character is not defined, forged or built in good times. The fire of adversity forges our steel. And the searing heat of defeat reveals what we are made of.” -Cory Booker